


Missing Piece

by teaandchess



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Powers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling Angels, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 09:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaandchess/pseuds/teaandchess
Summary: One night, to absolve a secret pain, Castiel tells her a story. A private story he doesn't realize she knows as intimately as he does. He doesn't realize the truth. That beneath the surface, Meg is something far more than a demon. Her beginnings are older than Hell itself and were once as innocent as new snow.





	Missing Piece

He found himself staring at nothingness sometimes, wondering if there was something missing. A jigsaw puzzle piece to slot in the place of a broken solution. His attempts to repent for Heaven had collapsed around him, Dean and Sam worried about him and his actions, and he… knew they had a point. Years ago he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of such things again but now he wasn’t so sure.  
    He really had no hope but he had memories of what that emotion was like.  
    Castiel simply obeyed his orders and started staying out of Heaven when the weight of what he’d done grew too much, when the desperate measures of his brothers and sisters had essentially turned Heaven into a war zone once more and his own depression was too much to bear. They all loved him, he knew, but they could not trust him as they once did. He’d led them to the precipice of free will and then dark forces at work had forced them to turn around and obey mindlessly. He loved them all so dearly, and such love was bitter to taste when he had to order their deaths.  
    But Naomi’s manipulations had essentially made it so that he had nowhere to turn, no other path to take.  
    Which was likely why three nights of his week he spent in a one-star motel room staring up at the ceiling and trying to forget what this would cost him in the end.  
    He’d already lost so many he had loved over the centuries.  
    The mouth that had been tracing patterns on his stomach stopped just above his belt and he waited until there was a nip of teeth before he looked down. Dark eyes, almost overshadowed by an arch of equally dark brows, stared up at him across his naked torso and ice-cold hands crossed beneath a stubborn jaw to give the poise of an irritated woman being ignored.   
    “Million miles away there, Clarence,” Meg’s smoky voice drawled, warm breath skating across his flesh and making it crawl. “Mind coming back so I don’t think I’m getting rusty in making you moan?”  
    “I’m thinking.” He looked back up at the ceiling. “Perhaps it is better that we don’t do this tonight.”  
    He felt the bed shift and suddenly she was straddling his shoulders, knees pressed into his arms and her tiny form weighing him down. Castiel stared up at her and tried to read her face. The position was familiar, she enjoyed using it on him often enough to get him to touch her, but there was no real sexual encouragement like there normally was.  
    “About what’s been going on overhead?” she asked as if genuinely interested. Which of course, he knew, she wasn’t. “Boo-freakin-hoo, Castiel. You’re always in the middle of a battle. So are the rest of us in this stupid place.”  
    “My battles are a bit more complex.” He glared up at her. “I’ve never rebelled this far.”  
    “Oo, well, welcome to the big leagues, cloudhopper. Gets me all shivery to think of you sinking to my level.” She ignored the tension going through him at the possibility of him being like her. “Can you just imagine the day when you get real down and dirty and start going all yellow or black eyed? Gives me tingles.”  
    She was teasing him, he knew it, but his sight almost went blank at the words. There should be no comparison between angel and demon.  
    His power cracked around them and before she could even take a breath he had her crushed under his weight and his hands pinning her shoulders down. Meg felt a flicker of fear at the sheer electricity coming off him, a fear that slowly melted into desire when she realized how hard he was breathing.  
    “There we go.”  
    “I am nothing like you. Will never be like you,” he whispered against her mouth. “This is just a… momentary distraction that I need. I don’t enjoy it.”  
    Meg crooked an eyebrow and licked her lips, glancing down between them. “Momentary distraction? Sweetness, this has been a few months worth of distraction. That’s not counting when your war with Raphael was going on and you kept coming to me wanting to spend a few hours. Not counting you following me around the world when you went through that mad as a box of frogs phase. So, with all those months tallied up, I’d say you enjoy something of it.”  
    He let her hands go when she squirmed and resorted to simply staring down at her.  Meg trailed her fingers down his chest, causing his breath to suck in when she scraped her nails hard down the muscles and created ten bloody tracks on his pale skin.  
    “Or are you just leading me on? All these months?” she muttered, eyes on his face. Castiel like this was dangerous to her. Unstable and depressed… fun… there were always moments where she was pretty damn sure he was going to just smite her to be done with it. She was a junkie for it.  
    “Have you… never regretted anything?” he asked, trying to roll off of her but Meg quickly locked her legs around his hips while unbuckling his trousers. She shrugged and he sighed, brushing his mouth against her forehead. “I regret so much.”  
    “Lot of regrets in just under…what… five years? You’ve been working fast.” She stroked his hips slowly and arched her hips. “Bit slow on this though.”  
    “I have more regrets than just a few years ago, Meg. My regrets began at the first war when I was still new to the Garrison.”  
    Meg groaned as he evaded her attempt to kiss him.  
    “Story time again? Can you tell me after you remind me why I keep letting you in my bed?” she encouraged, trying to give him the hint. Castiel sighed and dropped his head to kiss her. He wanted to speak his mind but until he took care of her she’d not stop prattling on and on. Meg moaned up into the kiss and twisted with him on the bed, raking her nails down his hips.  
    Like it or not, he thought, she had a point. He could forget, for a few moments, what he was going through when she brought pain and pleasure all at once. He never thought that absolution could come from such pure damnation.      
~~~  
    She had a habit after sex of curling up against the pillows and pretending he wasn’t there.   
A human would have felt cheapened by the gesture but Castiel was thankful for it most times; there were no cajoling words to draw him back, no meaningless gestures, and they left each other alone until things had calmed down between their respective powers. His light had always pushed her away anyway and Meg’s sarcasm about cuddling had gone over his head because he saw no need for it with her. But lately he’d noticed that his Grace was no longer sickened at the thought of meshing with her darkness. If anything, it was quieter when she was around.  
    So this time he stayed lying beside her, staring at the back of her head and wondering what it would have been like to lie against her.   
    Wondering if he dared try.  
    After a few long moments waiting for the cooling of sweat and the slow drop of a raging heartbeat, he shuffled himself over and carefully pressed himself against her back. Meg’s head jerked a little when his longer frame tucked up against her, his chin just over her head and his arm slowly wrapping around her stomach.  
    “What are you doing?” she asked. He heard the warning there in her voice. A slight drop that spoke volumes.  
    “I wanted to talk and I wanted you to listen. I did as you asked, remember?”  
    “So you decided to make me your stuffed animal?” She wriggled her hips a little so she pressed back against his groin. “Though I did feel stuffed.”  
    “Must you make such lewd jokes?” he asked, gripping her hip hard to make her stop that distracting wiggle. She grumbled under her breath before relaxing.      
    “Fine. Story time with Castiel commences,” she agreed in a dramatic voice that made him sigh. “What other regrets other than the result of five years worth of rebellion do you have, Clarence?”  
    He rubbed his chin against her hair thoughtfully. “Someone you remind me of… when you’re not being as prickly as you are.”  
    “Which is pretty infrequent, you have to admit,” Meg butted in and he gave her another squeeze. “Fine, fine. I’ll just lay here like a big old plushie and you can snuggle in and pretend I give a damn about you. But you’d better make it worth my while after.”  
    “Thank you for your permission,” Castiel muttered, rolling his eyes. Meg shifted more comfortably and he saw the appeal in holding her like this. For starters, it kept her immobile and less likely to distract him. And she was actually a comfort now. Like holding something that for a second could belong to him if he held on long enough.  
    He’d never actually… possessed anything. Borrowed, stolen, gifted, used, maybe. But felt like it had belonged to him and him alone for even a moment?  
    Conversely, he knew better than to tell her that. She’d gouge out his eyes.  
    “When the wars were going on, I was still set to watch the Earth with Anna… Anael … as my leader. She kept us all in line as Lucifer and Michael had all their debates, as Heaven started to split apart.” He tracked his hand up her skin, as if picturing splitting her skin in two like two sides of a battlefield. Meg shuddered but didn’t speak.  
    “We were all there to protect the angels set on earth to begin watching the humans, to set them on their right course. Those angels were vulnerable; created to watch and serve the humans, but very young. I was assigned to a fledgling named Zophiel.”  
    Lost in his track of memory, he didn’t feel Meg stiffen slowly. Muscle by muscle her body went as hard as marble, but Castiel only saw his memories instead feeling her body.  
    “What was that one in charge of? Not that I’m interested but back story helps and you pansies like to have this whole hierarchy and duty thing.”   
    “It was a bit of a mystery to the rest of us.” He slid his fingers down her stomach again, just brushing the apex of her thighs before going to her hip. “Zophiel was female, one of the few created, like Anael or Rachel. Like Anael, she actually was fascinated by the humans but I never once saw her interact with them. She watched. Like a Grigori but different.”  
  
  _“Castiel.” Anael’s shining features beamed down at him as he bowed to her and then rose. “This is your first assignment on your own.”_  
 _He flicked his wings and stared at the dainty creature staring down at the Earth far below them all. “She’s a fledgling.”_  
 _“One of the last. Like Samandriel but a different purpose.” Anael watched him carefully._  
 _“I was supposed to join Michael’s garrison I thought. For training.”_  
 _His sister’s beautiful eyes darkened a little in pain. “No, Castiel. I would not have you suffer that now. Not with Lucifer storming about Heaven as if God has thrown him out. I doubt our Father ever would. He loves him so.”_  
 _He felt like arguing. He was ready for more intensive training, ready to learn to serve alongside Michael and Raphael. Anael protected him so fiercely sometimes. But he sighed and nodded. “Very well.”_  
 _“Zophiel?” The fledgling stared up at them from her perusal of Earth. “Castiel will take you to where you are set to watch the humans.”_  
  
    “Is there a point to this story or are you just going to prattle till I fall asleep?” Meg asked.  
    “You asked, I am telling you.” He tucked her in tighter against him and ran his fingers down her side. “Why do you feel so… tense?”  
    “Just keep going. All this talk about angels and I’m craving chicken wings now.”  
    He nodded, ignoring the sarcasm. “I watched over her for a long time on Earth, as everything fell apart in Heaven. There was little to do. Boring work: repetitive and endless. We had to encourage humans to develop beyond… sloths.”  
    “Fascinating.”  
    “Shut up.”  
  
     _Zophiel’s green eyes were brilliant as she stared at the thick stand of massive trees and meadow grass lined with brush. There were humans nearby, unable to see them of course, but the bees were humming around them as they went from flower to flower. “Beautiful. Don’t you think?”_  
 _Castiel’s light bobbed a few times. A nod was the most he ever gave her. Several hundred years of him guarding her and no more than a few words ever passed between them._  
 _“Have you requested to be reassigned?” she demanded. Her voice was high and bright and he looked up to see her spinning in the air, creating a wind spiral that lifted the dying leaves into the air. The humans far below grunted and howled in fear and ran off._  
 _“I will if you keep doing that,” he muttered as he set off after the humans. It was easier to walk. The humans were still a young enough race to be frightened by anything unusual. Before he got more than a step, she was in front of him, a smile crossing her face. He blinked and stared at her, startled by the beauty in the expression. He tried it himself to mimic her and found that the strain actually relieved his tension a little._  
 _“Your light is very brilliant when you try new things. Why are you so afraid of new things, Castiel?”_  
 _“Why are you so unafraid, Zophiel?” he countered and the smile faded from him._  
 _“Because I was brought to bring cause. To have a cause.” She reached out and poked him in the stomach. “Why are you here?”_  
 _“To protect you.”_  
 _“That’s not what I asked. Why are you here?”_  
 _“I… don’t know.”_  
  
    Meg groaned. “Ugh, where’s the liquor when I need it to make this bearable?”  
    Castiel sighed.  
    But he didn’t notice how tight her hand was grasping the pillow beneath her head, tearing holes in the casing.  
  
 _It was another year gone by, nothing to an angel but a drop of water in a bucket, when Castiel realized Zophiel was there, like Melkajal and the cherubs, to show the humans to experience emotion a little more clearly, to learn more easily. Her light was more brilliant than his really, the price of him being a guardian and hers being a lesser Grigori who had no sense of angelic propriety. He stopped guarding her as much as before, leaving her for years at a time and oddly missing her during that time, and then he visited barely at all when Anael called him back to witness._  
 _To witness the final separation of Heaven. Lucifer was cunning, his words like silk and wrapping around them all in doubt. The peace in Heaven was nearly gone._  
 _But like Anael and Michael, Castiel stood on one side of the Grand Hall in the Heavens and watched as the Garrisons divided into two. Nothing could ever be in-between. Michael would not stand for Lucifer’s defiance and Lucifer would not stand by and watch his Father’s love be shared with humans._  
 _Rumours grew of the creation of a gross parody of an angel, using one of the precious souls God had so carefully crafted. Lucifer mocked God himself with such a thing._  
 _When the orders for Lucifer to bow to God’s Word came, from Metatron and his guard Sandalphon, the sky itself darkened with war. Castiel, once desperate to join a true fighting force, regretted ever wishing such a thing. He was a soldier though and he fought alongside the others with a mind devoted to God._  
 _The battle lasted too long so when there was a respite, when it seemed as if Lucifer might realize his vanity, he descended to Earth again and went to Zophiel. Her and her absurd light dancing and watchful eye on the humans. He sat in her shadow and she let him come and go. She let him talk. Things stayed the same. War one morning, Earth the next, his duties split in two._  
 _Until the day he wept in her arms about having to throw one of his own brothers, Belial, from the parapets of Heaven down into the growing darkness of another realm that Michael called Hell. The growing result of Lucifer’s damning actions, it had been explained, but even he knew what that meant. Knew the pain it would create for his own family. He’d wept for the very first time because he had heard Belial’s screams as if they were a part of him._  
 _She’d held him and rubbed her wings against his to bring him comfort until the weeping stopped._  
 _Without hesitation, Zophiel had let him curl his wings around her, cocooning them together, and her own wings had tangled with his in a gesture more intimate than sex._  
 _He loved her too deeply for it to be the same as the love he bore the other angels. And he knew she loved him as she curled in the shade of his wings and let her own slide over his form to bring him comfort. She whispered it to him over and over again, explained the emotion to him as a little different from the love they both bore God, told him of the cherubs and of the others set down with her to teach the humans, and he accepted it and returned it as intensely as he could. He stayed at her side and let himself hope._  
 _Then after a week in her company, merely keeping close against her while his wounds healed, Castiel was called back to Heaven to the resumed wars. He knew once he returned to Heaven the risk he put her in by going to her_.  
  
    Castiel paused in the middle of his story. “Are you asleep?” he asked, nudging Meg.  
    She shook her head.  
    “Something’s wrong?”  
    “No.” Meg’s body suddenly turned a little, her back pressing against his chest. “Keep going.”  
  
 _In the end, it was his love that was her downfall. Rumours were not only about Lucifer’s creation of a half-caste parody of an angel, a demon who was creating others now. But now there rumours about the angels already installed in Earth being attacked. It burned everything, destroyed the peace around them to have such innocent angels attacked and Anael had told him to find the others. They needed all the soldiers they could find. His sister knew of his protectiveness for Zophiel, the only one he could confess it to, and unlike Michael she did not discourage it._  
 _They went to Zophiel last in some effort to save her from the horrors of battle._  
 _Only to find her staring down a barren wasteland where the fallen angels had burned away all life in the area she’d claimed as her space to work. She’d been called back to Heaven but had remained on Earth. He recognized it as the place where he’d first seen her light dance and he could almost feel the tears gathering in her eyes as she watched the death around her. The humans she’d been told to protect. Dead and stacked worthlessly due to the demons and the fallen angels._  
 _“God spoke to me,” she whispered as they stood at her back. “He…”_  
 _“Zo.”_  
 _“You realize what this meant to me, to see this world fall apart?” She turned and he saw her fear and her anger. “If we could merely… step back from this war.”_  
 _“There is no stepping back. How can you suggest that? You serve God.”_  
 _“I know. I know my purpose but it is not to watch this world fall apart because of the Heavens.” Her wings flickered at her back. Anael stood silent behind him, staring at her sister sadly. “We were not made to destroy it all. I have purpose.”_  
 _“Zo, please.”_  
 _“I have a purpose.” Her head tilted down. “Do not ask me what God told me to do but I know it will bring me nothing but pain. And I accept that.”_  
 _He realized then that she would not fight for him. For any of them._  
 _“What did being here do to you?” he whispered and her eyes raised, the green of them like jade._  
 _“If you don’t fight with us, Zophiel,” Anael said, softly for her. “You will fight against us. You cannot forgo choosing a side in this, sister. You will need to choose.”_  
 _There was no mistaking the utter despair on her face as they left her alone in the desert. Or hiding the despair Castiel felt when he realized what he had to do._  
  
    He felt the demon turn a little in his arms. “That’s your regret? Making an angel choose sides in war? That’s a reality, cloudhopper.”  
    Castiel sighed and leaned against her. “I loved her and you should never have to choose between duty and love.”  
    The tension in her body was no figment of his imagination but he wondered why the story affected her so badly. She felt ready to run from him and only his arms kept her beside him.  
  
   _Zophiel had been almost torn apart by Lucifer before she finally fought beside her fallen brother, doing it to spare Castiel the pain of choosing between her and God. Castiel had heard the reasons from her in the last days of war when she’d come to him for comfort; Lucifer had threatened her, had threatened to tear him apart because she knew, as Castiel did, that he was no match for their Archangel brother. That what they shared between them on Earth, would be forbidden in Heaven and they would both be punished if they did not fight against each other._  
 _The Heavens shook under the force of battle and for the first time the war was nearly matched for hundreds of years. The humans below went on as normal, unaware of what was going on overhead._  
 _Until Michael threw Lucifer down into a cage built to hide him from the very thing he craved, God’s Light. In a ruthless gesture, the Archangel then refused to offer mercy to his own brethren._  
 _In the end, Castiel was the one that threw Zophiel from the parapets with the rest of his brothers and sisters. To save her the pain of what Uriel would do to her form, what was being done to all them to mark them for life as fallen. He’d wrapped her in his wings and whispered his love to her as she held him close and begged him to forgive her. He’d felt her fear but she simply ran her fingers through his hair._  
 _It was as unlike the forced fall of the other angels as night and day, but Anael had allowed him that moment, thwarting Michael by lying to him. But when Castiel had tried to urge her to fly off, she’d startled him by letting him push her out of Heaven and as she fell she’d carved out her grace from her breast with her own blade. It had exploded from her like meteor and burned a hole in the South Hemisphere. He’d watched her fall until he could take no more and returned to the Garrison to bury himself in serving God._  
 _By then, like all the other fallen who used to be his family, Castiel was forced to ignore her memory to wait for times of prophecy._  
  
    He stopped himself from telling Meg more. From telling her of how ultimately Anna had been influenced by Zophiel’s decisions to separate herself from the Garrison to watch the Earth. How Heaven wasn’t the same when Michael took complete control in God’s absence. How he’d become single-minded to ignore that foreign sensation of grief that War always brought.  
    He was good at that.  
    Meg was so still that he was sure she was sleeping. But as ever, she recovered.  
    “Quite the story. Didn’t look for your cloudhopper girlfriend after that though, huh?” she asked, and there was bitterness in her voice. “Some romantic ending.”  
    “I learned the price of disobedience then, Meg. If I went to find her…” He shook his head. “Graceless, she would be human. For all I know, she lived her life out as human and was sent to Heaven in the end as a soul.”  
    “Or Hell,” Meg muttered, her eyes shutting. Something in her voice made him turn her over beneath him, resting on his elbows to look down at her. She stared up at him, her face impassive and her eyes black to hide whatever she felt.  
    “You… weren’t shocked to hear the end of that story?” he asked, cautiously. She didn’t answer him and he shifted on top of her to rest his head on her breast. “You’re thinking. I can feel it.”  
    Meg rolled her eyes. “Try not to sound so impressed when you say that.”  
    “I’m didn’t mean it as that.” Castiel sighed and knew better than to keep going. “Thank you.”  
    Her body tightened under his. “For what? Sitting through it without falling asleep?”  
    He shook his head. “For listening. I’ve not told that story… ever.”  
    “Shame.” Her fingers started to card through his hair and he shuddered at the pleasure the surprisingly gentle gesture gave him. It was so familiar that he pressed into her, not sure why it tugged at him so badly. “Was a good one. I should tell you one sometime.”      
    His own hand drifted down her neck, tracing her necklace. The amulets there shone bright in the dim lamp light and he felt how hot they were though her skin was cold.  
    “You could tell me what these mean.” Her fingers stilled in his hair and then slid through again in that caress that made his memories come to the front of his mind once more. “They always feel so warm.”  
    “Another time, Castiel. I’ll let your snuggling pass this time if you don’t push for story time.”   
    She so infrequently said his real name that he noticed the almost sad way she drawled it this time, her tongue slipping over the rise and fall of his name as if she was unused to it. His fingers rested on the amulets and felt the warmth of them.   
    “Out of curiosity…” She cleared her throat. “Did that Zo chick ever tell you what God set her down to do?”  
     He shook his head and shut his eyes, starting to slip into a doze. “Never. She kept that closed inside of her. We were all given a purpose but perhaps she was given some deeper one that Metatron told her not to speak of. One she never did get to fulfill.”  
    “Maybe.” He glanced up at her from sleepy blue eyes and she shifted uncomfortably. “Get some rest. I’ll want morning sex after sitting through that story and it better be ten out of ten sex.”  
    He muttered something under his breath but did as she ordered. Meg still ran her fingers in his hair, unused to the affectionate gesture but willing to continue as he started to doze against her She never openly showed him affection, it was against her learned nature, but the random times she did it seemed to keep him from trying to discover much about her.  
    “Or maybe she was able to get around to it… just had to take the most painful route to get it done right,” she murmured under her breath and the amulets Castiel had been touching almost hummed in response. Glancing down, Meg frowned at the sight of it glowing under his touch. “Stop it. Not the time or the place. Not yet.”  
    She shut her eyes and tried to ignore the bitter feeling that the memories Castiel had revealed had given her.  
 _“Not yet.”_


End file.
